Exhibition Text

The 2015 Spring Catalogue exhibition features a major sculptural work by Paul Dibble,The Ark (2006/08).

Te Rongo Kirkwood (currently exhibiting at the prestigious De Young Museum, San Francisco) combines the traditions of Maori weaving, cape design and contemporary glass, producing transformative objects that recreate ideas, alter time and space.

Michael Hight’sNgauruhoe (2014) is a masterful painting. The beehives dominate the foreground but slide away at an angle which takes the eye up. Location and season is revealed as the subject but the apparent simplicity of that is contradicted by contrasts.

Israel Birch is included for the first time with a wonderful, trademark painting where the interplay of light, surface, pattern and form combine in a constant, restless state of flux.

Robert Ellis’Rakaumangamanga, 20th October (1980) is prominently featured in the new major publication on his work.

Harry Watson makes myths, using a blend of painting and carving techniques founded in the varying traditions of Maori and Pakeha cultures. In Holy Hapuka (2015) and Family Outing (2013) Watson employs metaphors of post-colonialism while he collapses time and invents moments of magic.

Neil Frazer’sIce Slice (2015) is not a conventional landscape but his command of reality is so profound that it is as if it has been hewn from the landscape itself.

Neil Dawson’sSpikes (2015) references his on-going Cloud series and the earthquakes in Christchurch with its double-ended spire alluding directly to the fates of the Cathedral and those who perished.

There are major works by Jenna Packer, Ann Robinson and Terry Stringer.

Dick Frizzell’sHay Rack (2012) is a stroke on stroke visual poem to the everyday and often overlooked rural reality.

Wayne Barrar is represented by two exquisite photographs of Catlins waterfalls.